When It Pours
by Khiori
Summary: Some days you just need a whiskey.


It never rains but it pours.

When she was a kid, Jane remembered always hearing her mother say that. Frankly, it had never actually made any sense to her and she'd just chalked it up to another one of those weird apparently traditional things adults say right before they go for the bottle of aspirin. Or something stronger.

Until she became an adult herself and started working as a cop.

Then she finally understood it all too well.

And today had been a day to reenact _Noah's Flood_.

Jane eased herself painfully down on her beat up couch, too tired to even make it to her bedroom. Or care that she was getting black soot and dried blood all over the worn cushions. She slowly worked off her vomit encrusted shoes and let them drop to her apartment floor, making a weary note to throw the sour reeking things away later. Her head throbbed dully but she just couldn't summon up the effort to drag herself any further, even for the nice industrial strength stuff she had left over from her surgery. She reached blindly around until one purpling bruise knuckled hand found her old soft afghan. Jane pulled it over her head with a groan.

Maybe if she pretended she was safely dead on one of the morgue's stainless steel tables, nothing else would go wrong today.

Someone knocked on her apartment door.

Jane wasn't sure if she wanted to scream or cry.

Didn't even karma have some sort of _cap?_

"If you're not Reader's Digest with balloons and a giant cardboard check for one million, go away!"

She heard soft laughter come from the other side of the door, then the sounds of a key working the lock. The elegant click of high heeled Jimmy Choos headed her way and even with a blanket on her face, Jane caught the familiar soothing scent of the other woman's gentle French perfume mingled with the faint cloying reminder of where she worked. Then she smelled . . . .

Jane frowned in confusion.

Pepperoni pizza?

What the _crap?_

The afghan was pulled off her by elegant manicured fingers and Jane winced a bit against the brighter light.

Maura took in the wreckage that was her favorite Italian with a professional medical assessing eye and pursed her lips. "Hmm. I should have brought the body bag."

Jane sighed wearily. " _Please_ , no lectures tonight, Maura, I really think I've had my ass handed to me enough already today."

The other woman's face softened. "I suppose you earned a reprieve."

Jane felt relief.

Maura smiled with more than a touch of steel in her hazel eyes. "I'll just book our discussion a few hours tomorrow, since we're both off."

Jane sighed soulfully and laid her head back on the top of the couch. "I never win. Now why do I smell pizza?"

"That would be because I _brought_ pizza."

Jane lifted her head and stared disbelievingly at where Maura was pointing. Sure enough, there on her table amongst the piles of junk mail and paperwork she still had to do was now a large brown cardboard box.

Jane's eyes widened in sheer disbelief. "No way! I _knew_ today met the criteria for the End of the World."

Maura sniffed dignifiedly, blushing a bit. "Well, you earned it. From the look of you, I'd say you featured prominently as one of the Four Horsemen."

"I'm pretty sure I led the damn _charge_."

Maura cleared her throat. "And did you actually get checked out by the EMTs or did you sneak past them like you usually do?"

"I'm thinking your fudging a bit on the no lecture part tonight."

"Jane." There was more than a little warning there.

"If I say yes do I get pizza?"

Maura gave her own long suffering sigh but her mouth quirked wryly amused at Jane's weaseling. "Depends on which part you're saying yes _to_."

Jane wrinkled her nose, then winced hard and gingerly touched it. It was swollen pretty good.

Well, that explained the slight breathing trouble.

"I hate it that you know all my tricks." She grumbled.

Maura's hazel eyes glinted. "Don't worry; you're a Rizzoli, I'm sure you'll manage to invent more as soon as my back is turned."

"Why does that not sound like a compliment?"

"Do you really want me to answer that?"

"Ah, no."

"I assume you will want to eat this on your couch in your traditional lack of civilized amenities format?"

"Maura, it's not real food if you don't eat it with your hands."

"I'm not sure which continually disturbs me more, your extreme misconception of food or your serious lack of appropriate hygiene."

"Hey, you're the one that touches dead guys, not me."

"One, I practice complete sanitation procedures which includes high risk gloving practices and two, I don't particularly care for the way you phrased that."

Jane grinned teasingly. "A little too Hoyt playtime?"

Maura shuddered. "I'm the 'Queen of the Dead'; shouldn't _my_ humor be the macabre one?"

"One would think. But I'm naturally weirder than you in the humor department."

Maura's mouth twitched in wry self-depreciation. "Hmm. How unfortunate for us both."

Jane grimaced hard as her ribs twinged sharply as she tried to sit upright and gave up. "This is ridiculous. I need either a crane or an Alfred."

"You really can't afford the hourly rate of the crane on a detective's salary and the other comes with a violent INTJ paranoid with poor taste in evening attire and severe childhood PTSD issues."

Jane laughed then grabbed her sides. "Ow, ow, ow! Don't make me laugh, Maura!"

Maura put her hands on her skirted hips. "It's called payback."

"For _what?_ "

"For making me have to track you down, put a greasy cardboard box onto the leather seats of my car, and babysit you when I could be home in a gently scented bubble bath drinking a fine champagne and listening to Wolfgang."

"Huh, that last part actually sounds nice."

"Hence, the payback. Want help up?"

Jane considered just staying lying down. "Will you feed me pizza like grapes?"

Maura's mouth flickered. "Don't tempt me. It might not go well for you if today is any judge."

"Fine, help me up."

Maura stepped forward and gently but efficiently assisted her upright. Given that she was so much smaller than Jane, it surprised the detective.

"Hey, you're really pretty good with this. You're way stronger than you look."

Maura looked amused. "It's not about strength; it is about the correct application of leverage. And of course I am good with this, Jane; I have to maneuver bodies all the time in the morgue." She started working pillows about Jane.

"Oh, yuck, Maura!" Jane batted at the other woman's hands. "That's not the imagery I wanted to take to bed tonight, thank you so very much. And stop it, you're starting to fuss."

"Someone has to take care of you, Jane. You're doing such a poor job of it yourself."

"Starting in the lecturing again."

Maura snorted. "Fine. And if you're concerned about sleeping, I can dose you unconscious."

"Because that sounds really _not_ psychotic, Maura."

"Do you need help tucking your blanket around you?"

"No, Mom. Maura, I mean it, _stop_."

Maura smiled. "You are the worst patient, Jane."

"That's only just because you're used to dead people."

"Well, they are refreshingly quiet and compliant."

"Maura, refreshing and corpses don't go together, just saying. Can I have my pizza now?"

Maura walked back over to the table and brought back the box. "Bon appetit."

Jane set to carefully with her injuries, making little happy noises at the hot cheese. She had hurt so much that she didn't realize just how hungry she was. "You never like me eating junk food, Maura, what gives?"

"You . . . worried me today."

Jane blinked, her cheeks full like a squirrel's. "What?"

Maura sighed and sat down carefully next to Jane on the couch. She was quiet for a few minutes obviously formulating her thoughts and Jane forgot about the pizza slice she was holding in her bruised and scraped hands.

"Maura? What's wrong?"

"Jane, I know you can't help but dive right into the chaos. It's part of your fundamental character construction and nothing is going to change that. I accept that. I even admire the courage and selflessness that it represents. But I need . . . I _need_ you to try and be more careful." She turned pained hazel eyes on Jane. "You worried me. And . . . and you frightened me. I talked with Korsak. He said you came really close today, Jane."

Jane put down her pizza and reached over and took one of Maura's hands and squeezed it tight. "Hey, you're not going to lose me, Maura. I'm a Rizzoli; we're hard to kill, okay?"

"Jane, I have a morgue full of people who thought they were hard to kill." Her voice softened. "I've had to look down on Frost." Her hazel eyes now stared hard into Jane's dark ones and her jaw tightened. "I can't do that with you, Jane. I _can't_."

"Okay," Jane said, her rasp quiet, "Okay. I promise I'll start being more careful."

Maura nodded sharply. "Good." She gave a weak smile. "Or I promise you, I'll let Pike do your autopsy."

"Maura! That's just plain _mean!_ "

That got a stronger smile. "And I'll tell your mother that you wanted a pink casket."

Jane's eyes bugged. " _Maura!_ "

Maura's eyes started to glint again. "And I'll ask Rondo to deliver your eulogy. I'm rather curious as to what he'll say about his 'Vanilla'."

"I will come back and haunt you _forever_ , woman."

Maura laughed. "Good."

"Not good. I'll take up residence in your closet and play poltergeist with your shoe collection."

Maura gasped. "Jane! You are _not_ to touch my shoes!"

Jane grinned manically. "Oh, there's _so_ going to be touching. And moving the boxes out of order."

"Jane!"

"Mixing up the pairs."

" _JANE!_ " Maura smacked her on the arm.

"Ow! Hey, injured here!"

"Oh, I'm sorry, Jane!" Maura looked instantly contrite and started checking Jane over. "Do you need ice?"

Jane grimaced. "Only if it comes with beer."

Maura scowled. "No beer. You'll need an analgesic to sleep tonight and alcohol-"

"Maura, beer is practically water."

"Honestly, Jane, it is very near irrefutable evidence of the existence of a divine being that you have managed to survive this long."

"Hey, my priest said almost the exact same thing."

"And it explains a lot about your mother."

" _Hey!_ " Jane shoved Maura.

Maura yelped. "Jane! You got grease on my blouse!"

Jane winced. "Not on purpose!" She thumped the pizza box onto the coffee table and anxiously leaned forward painfully, trying to inspect the damage. _Nothing_ on Maura was anything less than expensive. "Look, it's not too bad, right?"

" _Jane!_ This is _Saint Laurent_ silk!" Maura began quickly unbuttoning her shirt, revealing black lace and smooth fair skin beneath it. "I think I'm going to try and-"

There was a rattle of a key and then the door to Jane's apartment banged opened and Angela burst through. " _Jane_ , Frankie just told me what happened-"

Both Maura and Jane looked at each other and then down at Maura's now fully opened blouse and then back at each other.

Jane sighed soulfully and looked accusingly up at her stained ceiling. "Really?"

Angela skidded to a stop and her eyes went huge as she caught Maura's state of partial undress. She turned an amazing bright red. " _Oh!_ I'm so, _so_ sorry! I didn't know you were having, uh, _company_ , Jane!" She gave a mortified little wave to Maura. "Hi, sweetheart."

"Ma-"

"I swear, Jane, I don't interrupt you on _purpose!_ "

"Angela-"

"Though I guess this means you're doing better than Frankie thought. That's good, right?"

" _MA!_ "

"Right, _right!_ I'm going, I'm going, and just . . . pretend I was never here, okay, girls? Have, uh, have fun!"

The door slammed shut behind her.

There was an absolute dead silence in the room.

Jane cleared her throat with as much dignity as she could muster and sniffed. "For the record, that was one too many keys to my apartment out there."

"Yes, yes that was. Although, on the bright side," Maura offered, while she primly smoothed her skirt, "at least it was your mother."

Jane just stared at her incredulously.

Maura winced. "An excellent point."

"Ya _think?_ "

"Would you, ah, like me to get you that beer now?"

Jane groaned and dragged her afghan back over her head. "Forget the damn beer. Noah here needs a _whiskey_."


End file.
